Blackstone Rising

The Ghostdance War

For years after Daniel Coleman led his cadre of believers out from the Abilene REC compound, he dropped from public view. Knowledge of his activities during that period is minimal, but he was, most certainly, proselytizing. Among Native Americans-those still free as well as those incarcerated in camps or restricted to the ever-shrinking reservations-word spread of a new prophet, a great shaman to whom the spirits had taught a powerful dance.

This inspired Native Americans to resist the tyranny of their existence. Many more escaped the camps, eluding the federal and corporate hunters by fleeing into the wilderness. Like their ancestors, they began a guerrilla war against an army that wanted to destroy them. Unlike their ancestors, they had access to the same technology as their enemy.

In 2014, Daniel Coleman stepped out of the shadows. He called himself Howling Coyote and declared that he was a shaman of the Ghost Dance. Backed by an elite core of fanatics, he announced the formation of the Native American Nations, a coalition of tribes. They laid claim to all of North America and demanded the immediate withdrawal of all persons of European, African, and Asian ancestry, threatening dire magical retribution if the demand was not met. Of course the media tried to make a laughingstock of Coleman and his followers. Though magical phenomena had become increasingly commonplace, no one believed any group of persons could enforce such a threat.

Insulting jokes were still making the talk-show circuit when Howling Coyote and his Ghost Dancers demonstrated their power. In 2014, Redondo Peak erupted, burying Los Alamos, New Mexico under a cloud of ash. Howling Coyote appeared in a vid-cast from a nearby Zuni reservation. He claimed credit for invoking “our Mother Earth to punish the children who forsook Her.”

Surviving documentation indicates that the U.S. government did not take the claim seriously, except to capitalize on an opportunity to capture the elusive resistance leader and smash his growing movement. Within an hour of Howling Coyote’s broadcast, a federal reaction force, composed of the Sixth Air Cavalry Battalion from Fort Hood, Texas was in the air. The helicopters and support aircraft never reached the Zuni reservation. All were destroyed by the sudden appearance of violent tornadoes. When a second force arrived, the self-proclaimed shaman was long gone.

The guerrilla war went on, to the great embarrassment of the federal and corporate forces, who seemed unable to see or touch their prey. While frustration mounted in the government, it became harder to enforce news blackouts and official denials wore increasingly thin. Finally, someone leaked the whole story, and it rocked the government, with then-President Jesse Garrety forced to take the heat.

Amid the storm of criticism, Garrety was assassinated in late-2016, followed shortly by the assassinations of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister David Cameron of Great Britain, and Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The assassins of Putin, Netanyahu ad Cameron were ultimately killed in violent confrontations. William Springer, the man identified as Garrety’s assassin, was never captured.

William Jarman, the new US President, issued the now-infamous Executive Order 17-321 immediately upon taking office. One month later, Congress ratified it with the Resolution Act of 2016. The corrupt government had sanctioned Jarman’s plan to resolve “the Indian question”: total extermination of all Native American trives.

While the government huddled with the megacorporations to plan their strategy, Howling Coyote’s people had quietly begun their own solution to the “Indian Question.” We now know that the Great Ghost Dance began in 2017, as men and women of the tribes all across the continent performed the ritual that Howling Coyote had taught them. They san his songs and chanted his chants. Their power grew.

Early in the year, when the government moved to implement the Resolution Action of 2016, several months of freak weather and other uncanny disturbances disrupted military bases and supply dumps assigned to the plan. With each new delay, the President sacked another general, but he refused to commit his forces piecemeal. By August 17, the government had finally managed to assemble its troops, and the operation began to roll.

That morning, at 10:32 AM Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams all erupted in cataclysmic fury. Mother Earth had announced whose side she was on, and even the most skeptical became believers. Fighting continued two years after that, resulting in the Treaty of Denver in 2018